


Her Name is Marian Shepard

by Deviation



Series: The Edge of the World [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Depression, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:51:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deviation/pseuds/Deviation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name is Marian Shepard and when she was sixteen there were monsters and fire and a shot that echoed in her heart. When she was sixteen the world fell to its knees. When she was sixteen she liked pretty boys and philosophy class and running her hand through the tall grass of Mindoir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Name is Marian Shepard

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfiction I've written in a long while, hopefully it doesn't disappoint.

Her name is Marian Shepard. She has sky colored eyes like her mother and hair made of fire like her father. She works in the fields in the evening and goes to school in the mornings. Life on Mindoir is peaceful. Her father is gentle and kind, her mother passionate and loyal. There is a boy three years older who thinks Marian looks pretty in her white dress so she wears it whenever she possibly can. There are two moons that look lavender in the night sky and color the grasses and trees of Mindoir deep indigo during the night. Marian is sixteen and she likes pretty boys and philosophy class and running her fingers over the tall grass.

 

Marian is sixteen and the world is ending in fire and blood. She doesn’t see them clearly, too much smoke and heat and fear clouding her vision but she know that there are monsters with too many eyes and noses and guns blazing. Her father falls, bags full of seed spilling to the ground, mixing with blood. She and her mother run, run, run for the forests and the trees where the wild things watch and creep and salivate. Mother always said, “Marian, don’t go into the forest now, it’s dark and dangerous there.” But now between certain death and likely death there’s no choice. She sees others running for the forests as well, some are wrapped with vines and dragged to the ground, the living forests devouring them, most are shot and stunned, falling to the ground immovable, to be killed or captured depending on their usefulness. Her mother falls to the ground, the small pistol she carried falling to the ground, the world around her falling to the ground. There’s no time to think, no time to decide what to do, Marian grabs the pistol, sees the monsters coming for her, coming for mother, frozen and helpless with sky eyes staring up at her, awake and aware, and goddess knows what they’ll do to her. 

So Marian fires at the of crowd monsters, aim wild but close enough to scare them into hiding, buying precious time. She spins, gun burning scars into her hands, adrenaline pumping and no time to think, she fires one shot into her mother’s frozen body and runs.

And so she keeps running and running and running to the alliance and to the future, from post to post and assignment to assignment. She doesn’t think of Mindoir or her mother or her father or her friends who are dead or worse. She keeps running, hiding her heart in a box deep within herself, sky eyes following her for thirteen years.

And then she wakes up

There is Saren and Specters and there is Garrus and Tali and Kaiden and Wrex and Ashely and Liara and Chakawas and Joker and the Normandy. There is intrigue, mystery, dead species and dying species. A Rachni Queen is saved, a Matriarch dies; A colony is saved, a Thorian dies; A scientist saved, a Prothean ruin is lost. But they are winning and they are fighting and for once no one she loves dies. And then, then, the citadel, a women, older then Marian but younger then Marian, bald and emaciated, confused, scared, depressed and so very very lost and Marian is staring into her mother’s eyes. 

Garrus is with her, and so is Wrex, when the girl who could have been Marian dies. And part of Sheppard, the part that was able to lift a gun and kill her mother, is relieved that she found peace. 

The rest of her retreats to her room on board the Normandy and cries. 

And then it’s Illos and there are Geth and Kaiden’s dead, has been dead, and then Saren dies and the council lives and Anderson is Ambassador, and the world is in flames and dying and broken. 

And a few months later so is she.

Until she’s not. 

It’s not a relief. It’s not welcome, the dead should stay dead, the dying should be spared pain. Marian has never been a good person, not in the way most people think. But she spares pain when and where she can and she protects what belongs to her.

(She thinks of Thresher Maws, in that shuttle to the illusive Man, and smells acid and burning flesh, sickly sweet and full of heat and blood. She thinks of the dead, the dying, that she left behind. Never again, she vows. Never. ) 

She’s a terrorist for peace now, with resentment issues and depression issues and traumatic issues and she’s a broken doll on strings just a bit too loose. Played with too much, too hard, and never repaired. She gathers a crew, holds them close to her chest. She becomes vicious to strangers, suspicious, paranoid, a woman so different to who she was before that no one who hasn’t met her before thinks that she is the great and famous and kind Commander Sheppard. 

(She brings a locket to a mourning Asari, she wishes the Rachni Queen well, She spares mercenaries, comforts a mourning mother and saves a green Asari, she helps young Quarians on their pilgrimages, giving money and scolding prejudice and selling a contract, and she saves a sick Batarian, ignoring monsters and flames all the while

Perhaps Marian hasn’t changed as much as she wished she had)

And she meets Thane. Thane, who is kind. Thane, who kills. Thane, who regrets, and loves, and lives with as few regrets as possible and asks for her help in relieving the few he has left. Thane whose smiles are more in his voice then his face, all purring hums and tones just out of her range of hearing. Thane, who quietly observes her fault lines and stiches and broken pieces and forgives her for them, showing her his own in turn.

Thane who is dying. 

(Marian knows her heart; understands why it races and flutters and why it sits so heavy in her chest. She falls asleep, staring into the void of her first death and she sees her mother’s eyes, unforgiving and dead. She doesn’t cry when they turn green like dry seaweed, set deeply within the skull and surrounded by poison green scales. But it’s a close thing)

She stays away after that, cowardly hiding her heart away in a box. She lessens her visits to life support, she take him on less missions, changes her schedule so they don’t see each other much outside of work. She hides in the battery and in the engines, taking comfort in old friends who know her heart. She listens to Mordin sing and she cheers, she drinks with Chakawas and plays poker with Joker. But she becomes quieter and sadder and her soul grows heavy. 

He is hurt by this, it’s easy to see, but she can’t make herself stop. He keeps trying and she keeps running and it’s a game of chase that no one is winning for he is patient and she desperate. Her heart breaks within its box. And then there’s information for Liara and it’s a distraction she takes and a quiet escape from a ship with Thane around every corner.

When Liara has become a shadow she asks of Sheppard, “What are you fighting for? A few stolen months with Thane before the inevitable?”

Marian’s heart climbs to her throat, doesn’t bother denying her own feeling, doesn’t bother saying that her heart’s in a box with a million locks. That Thane’s feelings are a mystery to her, that nothing has been said, nothing is solid, nothing is known. Except, of course, the inevitable. She says something about Kepral’s, something about time.

And Liara wishes Marian shallow comfort and happiness. 

It’s not enough, but the people in Marian’s life have a tendency to die, so she’ll make due. She always does.

(Stupid, stupid, stupid, goes the mantra in her mind, time wasted, time lost, stupid, stupid, cowardly, stupid.)

Later, when Liara has left and there is a moment of peace before the storm, Marian goes to Thane in Life Support (oh the irony) and she doesn’t say anything, she just sits across from him and stares and stares and he lets her. It’s almost anticlimactic, after almost two months of chasing, the prey walks to the hunter willingly. He has questions, it’s obvious, but he’s always been so very patient, and something in her face must say something he understands for he is still and silent as he watches her watch him, drink him in, memorize him. Before she’s even thought about it her hand reaches across the space between them and lies across his cheek. They’re both startled but they don’t move. She brushes a thumb beneath seaweed eyes and he leans into her. A thousand words lays unspoken between them, electrifying the air. 

“Shepard,” Thane starts.

“Marian,” she interrupts, quietly insistent. 

His eye widen a fraction so she says it again, “Marian,” and she gives him her name, for what it’s worth, which isn’t much.

He leans further into her hand, turning slightly and pressing his lips to her hand, “Siha,”he whispers, it’s a compromise, or maybe it’s something better, because it sends shivers down her spine and sounds a lot like love, “Siha,” he says.

And she smiles. 

 

When Marian was sixteen she liked pretty boys and philosophy class and running her fingers through the tall grass. When she was sixteen her parents told stories of what they did for love, the sacrifices they made and the people they lost. When she was sixteen she killed her mother and saved her from a life of slavery. When she was sixteen the world fell to its knees and there it stayed for fifteen years. 

When N7 Commander Marian Shepard is thirty-one she falls in love and the world gets up and moves forward, sky eyes soft and loving and proud. 

Her name is Marian Shepard.

“Siha,” he calls her.


End file.
